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Month: January 2016
Why do so many people use improper grammar on social media?
As a card-carrying linguist (even though they don’t pay me to be one), I am of course honour-bound to repudiate any claims of better or worse grammar. There is just more formal and less formal grammar, and you use the appropriate register and grammar in the appropriate circumstances. And “proper” grammar is quite improper in […]
Which language that uses the Latin alphabet has the most accents and diacritics in the world?
Counting distinct diacritics on the Wikipedia page Diacritic , and ignoring the distinction between diacritics that generate new letters and diacritics that don’t: Vietnamese has nine: horn, circumflex, breve, bar (đ), acute, grave, tilde, underdot, and hoi (mini-question mark) Livonian has six (macron, umlaut, ogonek, superdot, tilde, hacek), but wins points for multiply stacked diacritics, […]
What is Tutankhamun’s greek name?
King Tut is famous now, but his memory had been quite effectively erased by his successors. Manetho wrote a Greek history of Egypt listing pharaohs, whose names only kinda sorta line up with the names we find in Egyptian documents. The pharaoh he lists corresponding to King Tut is Rathotis. See the paper Manetho’s Eighteenth […]
In ancient Greece, in place of “Sire” or “Your Grace,” how were people of stature addressed? Is there a gender neutral term?
The relevant monograph is: Greek Forms of Address: From Herodotus to Lucian (Oxford Classical Monographs) (9780198150541): Eleanor Dickey. See review at Bryn Mawr Classical Review 97.11.09 The male defaults were anax/basileu (king), despota (lord, master), and kyrie (ditto). If you were talking to a king in antiquity, I think you just called them “king”: the […]
If hysterisis is “to lag” then what is “to lead” in greek?
The verb ‘to lead” is hegeōmai, but that’s not quite what you’re asking. hysterisis is a noun, derived from the verb hysterizō “to come after, to come late” (e.g. to lag), which in turn comes from the adjective hysteros “latter, last”. Your question sounds like it’s asking “what’s the opposite of hysteresis?” The opposite noun […]
How did the “Swastika”, which is said to be the symbol of the Aryan race, get its place in Hinduism?
As always, good outline in Wikipedia: Swastika To summarise: Lots of ancient civilisations used the swastika as a symbol, because it’s an easy shape to draw. Because lots of ancient Indo-European civilisations used it (including Indians, Greeks, Celts, and Armenians), German archaeologists assumed it was a symbol of the original Indo-European people. OTOH the Chinese […]
Does the expression “bite off more than you can chew” translate to other languages?
Sure. Modern Greek: Πήγε για μαλλί και βγήκε κουρεμένος: He went in to get wool, and came out shorn. Answered 2016-01-07 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/Does-the-expression-bite-off-more-than-you-can-chew-translate-to-other-languages/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
What does the Greek proverb “nothing done with intelligence is done without speech” emphasize? And how to interpret it culturally?
I don’t have the answer, but this will help narrow it down: This is not a proverb as such, but is a quotation from a speech by the orator Isocrates. Nicocles, section 9: οὐδὲν τῶν φρονίμως πραττομένων εὑρήσομεν ἀλόγως γιγνόμενον The emphasis out of context is not quite as obvious, because the same word logos […]
How can I learn to individuate ancient Greek verbs?
No substitute for rote, I’m afraid. But there are patterns and regularities, and you’ll need to make them your friend: If anything looks like a preverb (prepositional prefix), strip it off. It’s usually a safe bet that it is in fact a preverb. The endings do have patterns (the final vowels/consonants, the thematic vowels, the […]
What is the scientific name of Greek origin for the pathology where the patient has a phobia of assorted socks and wears unassorted socks?
The world is full of joke phobias, and bad Greek renderings of joke phobias at that. There is a special place in hell for the mangling of Greek that is Coulrophobia. If there’s a real phobia associated, it’d be symmetriphobia, fear of matching things in general (though I’m not clear from googling as to whether […]